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The 2019 iGEM Evry Paris-Saclay team is composed of master's and bachelor's students, but the project would not have been possible without the help of many people whom we wanted to thank.

Acknowledgment

Host institutions

The Lab of Systems and Synthetic Biology (iSSB), which is part of the UMR8030 Genomics Metabolics headed by Marcel Salanoubat, hosted us. Jean-Loup Faulon kindly allowed us to carry out most of our experiments in his laboratory. We would like to thank the researchers and doctoral students for their accessibility and kindness, as well as for their help when we needed it and in particular to Sylvie Bobelet, who has been supporting us since the beginning of the project.
Genopole has supported us and gave us access to the abSYNTH platform managed by Joan Herrisson.
The Micalis Institute of the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRA) has allowed us to carry out our experiments on Yarrowia lipolytica in the labolatory of our PI, Jean-Marc Nicaud.

Funding

We thank Genopole and the University Paris-Saclay for providing the main financial support.
We also thank the University of Evry and the French Government Administration Grand Paris Sud, both of whom also provided valuable financial support.

Material support

Genoscope performed the RNA-Seq with next-generation Illumina sequencing (special thanks to Marcel Salanoubat, Patrick Wincker and Aude Perdereau).
New England Biolabs (NEB) kindly supplied enzymes and kits for our molecular biology experiments.
Promega kindly supplied enzymes and kits for our molecular biology experiments.
Zymo supplied kits for the yeast transformation through Ozyme, its distributor in France.
Macherey-Nagel provided kits for RNA extraction.
SnapGene supplied ten free licences of its software for molecular biology which was essential for the design of our project.
IDT and Twist offered DNA synthesis.
Department of Biology of University of Evry-val-d'Essonne let us mortars and pestles and I-Stem, the Institute for Stem cell Therapy and Exploration of Monogenic diseases, furnished the liquid nitrogen needed for RNA extraction.

Special thanks

A special thank to Ioana Popescu, who has encouraged the creation of our team and who has been there at every step of the project. More than a supervisor she provided help and emotional support to us. She also put us in touch with INRA. She supported our team leader in all the administrative tasks. The success of this project is largely due to her.
A special thanks to Manish Kushwaha too for his continuous help during the designing and experimental steps of the project. His knowledge of synthetic biology and molecular biology has been a real help for the team.
We are grateful to Jean-Marc Nicaud and Young-Kyoung Park who enthusiastically shared their knowledge on yeast and helped us a lot in working with Yarrowia lipolytica.
We could not thank Anna Niaraki enough who has helped us with the bioinformatics analyses as well as bibliographic research.
We thank Nazim Sarica who helped us in the experimental work, especially with the RNA experiments. He has been really helpful for debugging some experiments and for understanding the implications of our results.
We thank Aude Perdereau who performed the NGS sequencing for us on the Genoscope’s sequencing platform.
We are grateful to Roman Holic who collaborated with us to perform the Thin layer chromatography (TLC) and helped us with his expertise.

External advice

Florian Jabbour who has welcomed us in his laboratory at the National Museum of Natural History of Paris and for his great help in the Human Practice part.
Véronique Leboulch who supported us by writing articles about the team in the Genopole newspaper and giving us contacts for our Human Practices work.
Jérôme Nicolas who brought his professional point of view on some of our ideas in Public Engagement and Education and also gave us contacts to help us in this same area of our project.
Macarena Larroude, who works with Jean-Marc Nicaud and Young-Kyoung Park. She helped us with her expertise in Yarrowia lipolytica.
Melchior du Lac and Pauline Trebulle who advised us on Flux Balance Analysis.
Caroline Aubert who gave us legal advice.
Dominique Zeliszewski from whom we received training for lab safety and security.

Distribution of the tasks

Our team has limited staff, so each one of us had to be versatile. What we put down below are the majority roles of the members of the team but each has had an important role in all aspects of the project.

Tom Zaplana, our versatile team leader, who created the team and took care of recruiting its members. While managing the administrative part of the project (financial aspects, search for sponsors and ordering of materials), he carefully coordinated the different parts of the team to allow the project to progress smoothly. He also participated in the wetlab activities by working on the design of the project, the analysis of the data and also at the bench when extra hands were needed. In addition, he led the Human Practices work by establishing contact with professionals and going to meet them.

Wet lab

Mehdi Tachekort and Antoine Aubert, as an efficient duo in the wet lab and in sponsor search, worked side by side to construct all the plasmids, perform the fluorescence measurements and went to INRA to work on Yarrowia lipolytica with our instructor Young-Kyoung Park and our PI Jean-Marc Nicaud. They have persevered and succeeded in processing the data generated by our measurement experiments. In addition, Mehdi also helped us recruit Quentin Dubaille to do a market study of our project and the economic impact of it. Similarly Antoine kindly asked his sister, Caroline Aubert, to enlighten us on the legal aspects.

Yucheng Liang assisted us in the lab during the summer when some of us had to take a break. She has been a great help in ensuring continuity in our experiments through the project.

Human Practices

Cécile Prince, our Education and Public Engagement enthusiastic leader, managed this part with an iron fist. She looked for and contacted the right people in order to get the various activities set up, attended meetings and explained our science to the public. She also co-wrote the comic book script and translated it into English so that we can propose it for the collaboration activity to other iGEM teams. In addition to that, she contributed greatly to the wet lab in the construction of plasmids and RNA extractions, notably by helping out the wetlab team while they were attending classes.

Suzanne Phengsay, our Education and Public Engagement mentor, offered us various ideas in this area from the very beginning. She coordinated the team and helped move our projects forward. She is responsible for the realization from the beginning to the end of our comic that explains Synthetic Biology. She is also responsible for the overall graphical presentation of our project. She was able to bring her experience gained by being a member of the team iGEM last year, which allowed us to move quickly and efficiently. Being in charge of the Communication department, she managed the different members of the team in this area, to publish on various social networks, to communicate with our sponsors, as well as fully supported the Education and Public Engagement work.

Quentin Dubaille is the economist of the team, who worked on Human Practices with Tom and Mehdi especially on the full market study adapted for our project.

Modeling and Wiki

Vincent Gureghian was in-charge of analyzing the large NGS sequencing data that the RNA-seq generated. He helped in advancing the project with his expertise in bioinformatics. In addition, his presence in the iGEM Evry Paris-Saclay 2016 and 2017 teams made him an experienced and valuable asset as a member.

Esteban Lebrun, helped us in modeling by performing the metabolic flux balance analysis on Yarrowia lipolytica. Being the former team leader of iGEM Evry Paris-Saclay in 2018, he helped Tom a lot in starting and managing the team by passing on to him all the tips and tricks of the job.

Stephane Mulot, was our web designer. He created our team website and our wiki structure and he introduced the other members to HTML. He managed to support all the requests from our biologists, who often did not have the computer skills or language. He understood us nonetheless, and helped us with his talents in HTML, CSS, and JS skills.

Brainstorming

All the members have been involved in the brainstorming to find an interesting project. Additionally, Marine Podevin, Solène Castanier, Joseph Josephides, Clémentine Battistel, Tiffany Leroy, Hilary Hilal and Rébécca Pages participated in the project at the beginning, but had to leave it before its completion.

Team:Evry Paris-Saclay/Attributions